Football, Sci-Fi & Movies

Hi, All!

Hope your Super Bowl weekend was pleasurable, even if you are a Patriot fan. If so, my condolences… that was brutal. On the other hand, if you’re a Seahawks’ fan you had a pretty good time. I have to walk a fine line up here in the Pacific NW. I’m from the Bay Area, San Jose to be precise, so I’m a lifelong 49er fan. I do like the Seahawks, and I cheer for them all season long, well, except for those two games.

If you’re not an NFL fan, then your weekend was whatever you wanted it to be, right? In and around football, I’ve been writing. I had the great opportunity to begin working with Mia Kleve, a well-respected editor in the Sci-Fi galaxies, and she’ll be editing multiple books over the next three months. I gave her three completed manuscripts, so I’m really looking forward to seeing her edits. William Alan Webb, Chris Kennedy and Kevin Steverson all recommended her highly, even to the point of waxing poetic. I feel blessed that she’s agreed to work with me. Wow.

Another interesting development lately for all of us as writers and authors is part of the age-old question ‘How do we let our readers and potential readers know what’s available?’ Meta and other platforms are increasingly reliant on AI, and their goal is to have AI determine what we should like and push it down our throats in advertising. If my book is highly searched by one of you, but the AI thinks you’d like something it thinks you should prefer, then it will place its recommendation above even the very title you were searching. I’ve noticed this on Amazon when I’ve typed in a specific title. It’s four or five lines down below other titles not remotely in the alphabetical orbit of the one searched.

Welcome to the 21^st century, I guess. We’ll figure out how to work around it. We’re humans, and that’s what we do. We figure stuff out, and we do it from the direction of the spirit that a machine will never replicate. It can give you words, information, even suggestions based on an algorithm, but it will never have a soul. I guess we should all be grateful for that!

Movie wise, have you guys seen any of the trailers for some of the new films coming out? I saw the trailer for Hail Mary, and I hope it’s as good as the Martian. Andy Weir is a great writer, and I truly enjoyed both the book and movie adaptation. I think it was Matt Damon’s best work to date, even if I did enjoy Bourne and some others. Hail Mary looks pretty good.

War Machine with Alan Ritchson and Dennis Quaid looks fun. Seems like last week Quaid starred in one of my favorite all time sci-fi films “Enemy Mine” with Louis Gossett. I look forward to War Machine. Doesn’t seem too serious, perhaps even a little cartoonish, but escapism can be fun.

If you like serious sci-fi, Dune Messiah is scheduled to be released this December. I have absolutely enjoyed both Dune films from Denis Villenueve so far. This will be epic and worth seeing on the big screen.

So, as I always close a post, if you’re a writer or just have dreams of being one, fight for it. Usually that’s an inner battle, but it’s one so very worth fighting. The joy of creating whole new worlds, people, critters, et al, is flat out fun. Come on along!

Craig